Ranges & Equity (1): Introduction to Ranges

If you knew your opponent's hand, then you would be able to make the perfect decision in every situation. Unfortunately, this is impossible as you will hardly ever be able to definitively put your opponent on one specific hand. Instead, you can rely on your knowledge, your experience and your observations to put your opponent on a number of possible hands. We call this collection of hands his range.

A range is therefore a set of hands that a player could be holding in a certain situation. This compilation of hands could be a number of single starting hands, but it could also be made of certain hand ranks such as two pairs, sets and flush draws.

If your opponent has a set on a T84 board, his range is: TT, 88, 44.

The concept of ranges is an essential tool if you want to play poker successfully. It allows you tosystematically write down assumptions about your opponent's possible hands in order to analyse them. What's more, it is an indispensable instrument to help you in identifying the best course of action.

This lesson will show you how to define ranges and how to write them down following a generally accepted convention.

A range is a collection of hands that a player could be holding in a certain situation!

Defining ranges and writing them down: how does it work and what's the point?

In order to analyse a hand, you have to write down and summarise the opponent's range in a way that makes it possible to evaluate it using poker software, like the Equilab.

There is a general convention on how to note ranges down. Knowing and applying it will offer you the following advantages:

You can exchange information with fellow poker players more easily when, for example, you are studying hands.

You can identify the probability that your opponent has a certain type of hand (such as flush draws, sets and top pairs) more quickly.

Analysing ranges with tools like the Equilab is more straightforward; you can work faster and in a more precise manner.

The following table offers you an overview of the various hand types and how to write them down:

Notation of ranges

Hand category

Example range

Example range notation

All pairs

22, 33, 44, ..., AA

22+

A sequence of consecutive pairs

44, 55, 66, 77

77-44

A sequence of suited connectors

65s, 76s, 87s, 98s,T9s, JTs, QJs, KQs, AKs

65s+

A sequence of suited hands

74s, 75s, 76s

74s+

All combinations including an ace

A2s, ..., AKs, A2o, ..., AKo

A2+

All combinations of suited aces

A2s, ..., AKs

A2s+

All combinations of offsuit kings

K2o, K3o, ..., KQo, AKo

AKo, K2o+

A sequence of suited one-gappers

86s, 97s, T8s, J9s, QTs, KJs, AQs

AQs-86s

Top x% of the strongest starting hands

5%

88+, AJs+, KQs, AKo

There are two rules for the notation of ranges:

For card sequences with one or more gaps between the lowest and highest card applies: only the smaller card grows in ascending order until it's directly adjacent to the bigger card. For example, a range of 96+ comprises 96, 97 and 98.

However, for hands with directly adjacent cards without a gap, like 65+, both cards will grow in ascending order until they reach AK i.e. 65, 76, 87, ..., AK.

Ranges can be given relative to hand strength. If this is the case, then the range will change to reflect hand combinations in relation to the board. Suppose that you believe your opponent may have a flush draw, his range would not simply indicate the starting hand but also a concrete suit.

Examples for defining and writing down ranges

The examples will allow you to practice detecting your opponent's range and writing it down.Example 1: The board is and your opponent's range is made up of top pairs, OESDs (open-ended straight draws) and ace-high flush draws. How do you build his range from this information?

First, you write down the hand combinations that reflect the various hand ranks:

Example 2: You might have heard an experienced player answering a question like "With which range would the opponent call on this flop?" as following:

“The Flop was ; I bet big and he calls. He was very passive, so he will call all of his sets and never raise them. I can however exclude QQ, because he would have pushed it pre-flop; same goes for AA and KK. I also don't see him folding his good top pairs. His range should include top two pair, too. I'm also positive that he would call his open-ended straight draw. When it comes to TT and JJ, I'm not completely sure, but I think he will probably also call those at least once on the flop.“

Having read this statement, you should now be able to turn it into a complete range. According to the convention that you now know, you can write down the opponent's calling range as follows:

Wow really good I completely missed the poker basics folder on pokerstrategy, but there are some absolute gems in there. Crazy that this is poker basics these days, when I started out my basics were how to calculate pot odds and outs and stuff when I started playing I unfortunately did not have the benefit of immediately learning how to think in terms of ranges from the get go (I didn't even know what a "range" was when I started out) so I had to get the hold of this later which is working but always more difficult as another, settled form of thinking now has to be replaced ...

#3, is really not easy to get at the 1st try. But it is worth u do. In the end it's mostly what you do at the tables to perfect your play. There is just that many hands that can beat yours. Does your opponent hold'em?